Sunday, 27 May 2007

My Aunty Mary, that would be my dads sister, past away last Wednesday evening. I first heard about it in the departure hall at Bali airport. Mum had rung our house and Gabi rang me. Bugger! She was 88 or 89. A good innings but the selfish side of me was looking forward to seeing her again. So it was that I spent a couple of days in Singapore with time to reflect on the old girl. She was hilarious. She had a lot of quirks did our Aunty Mary. Darling whereever you are we love and cherish you and through us you are imortalised.May the bar in heaven have your favourite tipple and a taxi to get you home. Now where did i hear that before??

Many thoughts have brushed past my synapses in the last few days but i think the one that I cherish the most from her is when my dad would give her that deadly second glass of wine at Christmas and other family functions, this pushed her over the edge and was enough to make her tipsy and she would let fly with the funniest things. Her laugh at these times I can hear in my head. She really was amazing. The funeral is tomorrow in Perth. At first I thought I would get a flight down there over the weekend and fly back Tuesday, but Gabi flies to Singapore herself on Tuesday which would mean I would have to get back no later than Tuesday afternoon. In the end I thought better of it. I am already planning a trip home in July for a wedding of a mate. Also the birth of his first child the week before, it will be his partners 4th. She has 3 girls from her first marriage. Would be his luck to get another girl and then he would be totally surrounded, hehe!

Snapped one of my surfboards this morning. It was the yellow mal I always ride, my favourite. A McTavish Liberator 9'1"! You can see Max putting his board in it's bag. Echo beach is the white caps you can see in the distance on the right and the white caps on the left is old mans. Where i did this.

Will drive up to Poppies in an hour or so and drop it off at one of the surf shops to have it repaired. I have the name of a good shop. 3 different people said they were the ones for snapped boards, so it must be the place. Doubt if I will ride it much from here on out but it will be a good board for visitors. I have another yellow, I brought two of their demos which are this special yellow all over. That board a 9'1" McTavish HP. It isn't as full bodied as the liberator but almost identical in silhouette. Plus I have been using my McTavish 7'4" in the huge swells that we have received of late. Perhaps i will stick with the short boards a while longer. We will see.

We went for a drive down the Bukit Peninsula the other weekend and rather than bore you with more words I will do as asked by my sister inlaw, Fluff, and put some more photos in. They are...

View of the beach Nusa Dua; I like this one as later the beach got incredibly crowded with locals but in the heat of the middle of the day this child was the only one that braved it. Well done i say!

Photo of Gabi, Maxi & Oscar. This is along one end of the Nusa Dua beaches. The place is beautiful over there. The white beaches are very different from where we surf at Canggu where the sands are volcanic therefore very dark.

Here we have a photo Oscar took of Gabi, Maxi & Myself. I am running because Oscar sat there with his finger on the button so we ended up with 30 photos of the 3 of us. Most were a bit blurred like this one but everyone is having such a great time that it makes it special.

Next is the temple on the hill at Uluwatu. Very cheeky monkeys live along these cliffs and one had a go at my camera bag. They are spoiled by tourists always feeding them and now they are sulky if you have nothing for them.

If you turn around 180 degrees then your looking down onto the surf from the cliff also down at Uluwatu. The sun starting to sink in the ocean it was a beautiful spot. We need to go there again. With our boards next time. The actual surfing spot is even further around the corner.

Lastly is a photo of me on my shortboard, we had a huge swell come through a week ago and I dropped down onto the shortboard. Waves at Padang Padang got to a reported 3 storeys high. Photos on Balisurf.com showed guys standing in the barrel with enough room above them for someone else to stand on there shoulders.

Even Canggu where I surf was so big that most people sat in the carpark. Oh and I suppose you will see me on that more and more now my favorite is broken.